Expanding Ideas

Jacob Van LunenWednesday, March 30, 2011

ast week I worked on a rareless deck that had the ability to compete with some of the most established decks in the metagame. Since that column, a lot of you have sent me emails asking what rares I would add to the deck if I was not overly concerned with keeping the rareless theme.

This week, I'm going to take the rareless deck from last week and upgrade it with a few different rare cards. We'll start by taking a look at the deck from last week:

The original version of "Rareless and Careless" did very well in games where it drew Neurok Commando. It stole other games with Kiln Fiend, but the Neurok Commando draws seemed like the games where the deck functioned the way we wanted it to. The deck had trouble with Gideon Jura and Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle. The deck did very well against players whose decks were full of non-Titan creatures.

Cheap burn is very well positioned right now, especially if you can back it up with a card advantage engine. Searing Blaze is a powerful spell and works very well with Kiln Fiend, but it suffers a bunch of problems in the deck as it's currently configured. You see, there aren't any red-blue dual lands easily available to us right now. If I cast a Searing Blaze on turn two, then there's absolutely no way for me to cast a Neurok Commando on the third turn, my ideal play. I've been shaving the numbers on this card as it was. I'd much rather have additional copies of Burst Lightning or Staggershock.

I found that the Kiln Fiends in the main deck were a bit of a mistake. Even if Caw-Blade doesn't pack much removal, most people have anywhere from four to eight spot removal spells. Kiln Fiend gives people a target for their Lightning Bolts, Condemns, Go for the Throats, and Doom Blades. If I cut the Kiln Fiend, then Æther Adept is the only targetable creature in the main. To all the Kiln Fiend lovers: Don't worry! The Kiln Fiends will still be in the sideboard, as they become a lot better when your opponents don't have any removal spells left after sideboarding.

Once the Kiln Fiends are gone, it seems safe to take it a step further. Æther Adept is good, but it may be better as another card.

Now we're doing work! We've got some extra slots to work with and we know what we want our deck to do. Now that we've cut all the targetable creatures it's safe to say that our extra copies of Neurok Commando (numbers five through seven) should be Jace Belerens. Jace Beleren has been printed in a few sets now and shouldn't be too difficult to acquire three copies of.

Here's the new main deck. It may not look special, but it does a great job fixing the leaks in the original rareless version of the deck.

The new sideboard is where the real magic happens. Your opponents won't see any creatures for their removal spells to hit, which gives you a great opportunity to side in the absurdly powerful—if they take out their removal—Surrakar Spellblade.

Think about it: You've just sideboarded out all your spot removal. Your opponent casts a Surrakar Spellblade or Kiln Fiend. You just lost the game as long as your opponent has a few burn spells to force it through. And this deck has no shortage of burn spells.

The upgraded version of last week's rareless deck still performs very well against top tier decks. I tried to showcase a few different opposing decks this week. I'd love to hear your feedback on this deck development series.